D&D 5E Is the Wall of Faithless in 5e?

[Zardnaar]

Kelemvor got rid of it for a while but then Ao showed up and said "Yeah, nah mate, put that back up"

Ao is the boss.

 

[cbwjm]

I think Myrkul made it. Cyric was fine with it. Kelemvor got rid of it but in so doing created an imbalance among the gods and their worshipers. I can't remember the details but people would be rewarded by him instead of going to the wall depending on how they lived their life.

 

[Mecheon]

I think Myrkul made it.

He didn't just make it, it ties into one of his 'Come back in the event I am killed and/or defeated' plans. Like what Bane and Bhaal had

 

[Mirtek]

It seems to me a fundamental problem of all the stuff done with souls is that we "invented" the concept to basically give ourselves a sense of immortality, to define something that is truly the essence of being. Our body is basically just a (temporary) shell for our true self, and our true self exists forever without end.

Torturing souls... yeah, maybe. But dissolving them into nothing? That seems to defeat the point of the whole concept of souls. If your soul can be gone forever, it still means your existence will end for good. There will be a time where you're not, and never will be again.
Even if you're not a Faithless, that is true. Because what happens if you go to your patron god, and in one of the conflict between gods, your god is killed and some devil/demon/other-soul-eating entity snatches your soul? It kinda defeats the entire concept.

Additionally, it's just mean. So you can live a good life, help your neighbours, do the best to support your community, but you happen to never have found a god to worship, and the response is that you just get tortured until you're dissolved. Why couldn't a good god take you on out for the effort of trying to be a good person? Why does it have to be the Wall of Faithless? Why is that the best option for everyone involved?

Souls are not eternal in D&D anyway. Eventually you are eaten by either your deity or plane in 99.9% of all cases

 

[Mirtek]

Ah, so, now Forgotten Realms has to bow to Planescape canon. Nope. Sorry. As far as Forgotten Realms is concerned, none of that applies. You are playing Forgotten Realms. There are no Powers. There are no Penitents. It's all Planescape stuff that need not apply.

Unless you want to argue that I MUST accept Planescape canon before I can play Forgotten Realms. In which case, we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

You do not have to accept it for your home game, but in Context of the ofiicial published sourcebooks and supplement they do accept each others Canon.

 

[gyor]

Kelemvor was the god of judging the dead In 2E too. I can quote that from the same source as "all without a patron go into the wall", if you like.

Later 2e, at first Cyric was God of Judging the Dead.

 

[Mirtek]

BTW, Guide to Hell is an odd case in 2e.

It did not bear the Logo of any of D&Ds (meta-)Settings and did not fit with what the Rest of D&D worlds had firmly etablished between them.

While some of it's ideas eventually found their way into the Rest of D&D, mostly in Form of unproven rumors, i'd hestitate to use that one as a real source for anything

 

[Nagol]

Later 2e, at first Cyric was God of Judging the Dead.

Sure!, But the poster was saying the source was suspect because Kelemvor changed stuff but the source has Kelemvor using said wall.

So far as I'm aware the WotC attitude seems to be "if you want canon and more detail, it was published previously and we've made it available so use it. We may or may not get around to providing an update." The wall exists in 5e explicitly. It's function is explained in earlier works and not contradicted by any 5e source. So we should expect the wall to function similarly in 5e as a base. The wall eats anyone without a patron deity unless baddies get him first.

DMs can of course alter its function, but DMs can effectively alter anything so that's immaterial.

 

[Seramus]

So we should expect the wall to function similarly in 5e as a base. The wall eats anyone without a patron deity unless baddies get him first.

We know from the novels that Kelemvor does not send people without a patron to the wall. Those people get judged to determine their faith.

There is a discrepancy about what the people of Faerun personally know. People think they need a patron but there's no indication of why they still think that. Occam's razor says it's a writer's mistake, but they don't technically conflict and every DM can make their own decision.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Kelemvor got rid of it for a while but then Ao showed up and said "Yeah, nah mate, put that back up"

Right, because Ao is the vehicle for the designers of dnd to retcon things without technically using a retcon.

Sure!, But the poster was saying the source was suspect because Kelemvor changed stuff but the source has Kelemvor using said wall.

Actually, what I argued was that Kelemvor had changed things since then. The fact that Kelemvor was god of the dead for a while before doing so is immaterial. I didn’t even say the source was suspect, much less for that reason. I said that the source spoke to the setting’s past, not its present. It was true in 13-whatever, but no longer the case in 1480, and thus we cannot assume it’s exactly the same again in 1492.